“I got you.”
“You’re gonna get my fist in your face if you don’t let go.”
“I got you, Baz. I got you.”
He keeps on saying it, over and over, refusing to release me from his death grip. And I keep on fighting. Trying to push him away. Trying to pushallof this away, as if we could ever go back to a time where it didn’t hurt so fucking much.
But we can’t. And eventually, I just… break.
All the fight drains out of me, and I collapse in Kirin’s arms like a rag doll, two minutes from giving up completely and chucking my own ass into the fire.
Kirin won’t let that happen though. Instead, he pours me into one of the leather chairs and takes a seat across from me, his eyes glassy, his face pinched with worry. “Talk to me, Baz.”
Talk. Right. Where the hell do I even begin? I drop my head and stare down at my hands, pale and useless in my lap, wishing instead they were covered in blood.
Janelle Kirkpatrick’s blood. Dark and warm and glistening…
The thought seizes me in an instant, chasing away the drunken haze with a flood of adrenaline. Purpose. Passion.
Kill her. Slay your demons in this realm, just as you did in the land of dreams. She’s weak. No one would blame you. It would be so easy…
“Baz?” Kirin’s hand on my knee snaps me back to reality. I try to suck in a deep breath, but a shudder rolls through my body, leaving a blistering pain in its wake.
“Fuck.” I grind my teeth and clutch my chest. Kirin’s on his feet in a flash, reaching for me, trying to help me sit up again, but all I can do is ride it out and hope to goddess I’m still in my right mind when it’s over.
It’s never been this bad before—a brutally searing agony, like my flesh is melting down to the bone. In a fit of desperation, I tear off my shirt and pitch it into the fireplace, then snatch the bottle back—the only thing guaranteed to numb the pain.
Kirin watches helplessly as I chug. And slowly, the pain recedes.
“Goddess, that’s… wow.” Kirin shakes his head, his eyes wide, fixated on the mark on my chest. It’s starting to fade now, but he saw it. I know he did.
XX. The mark of Judgment.
“He’s still with me,” I finally confess, because what the fuck else can I do? This shit is either going to kill me, or turn me into an empty, drooling husk. I can’t keep outrunning it. Can’t keep hurting the people I love by keeping them in the dark. “Don’t ask me how, but he is. The minute I’m sober, or lying awake at night, or hell—jerking off in the damn shower, that motherfucker is waiting to pounce. Half the time I can’t even tell the difference between my own thoughts and his crazy-ass rantings.”
Like the one where he’s trying to get me to kill that bitch…
I take another sip of the booze, but it’s quickly losing its luster.
“And this is why you’ve been ghosting us?” he asks.
“What choice do I have? I’m not in my right mind when it happens—I could hurt someone. What you saw tonight? That shit would’ve been a hell of a lot worse without mage’s little helper here.” I shake the bottle in front of his face.
Kirin sighs and reaches for it. After a long pull, he meets my gaze again, his own eyes haunted. “I’ve… I’ve felt his presence too.”
“Since we’ve been back?”
“Yeah. Not as bad as you, though,” he says, nodding at my chest. The mark has almost completely faded now, but I still feel the echo of that burn. “For me, it’s mostly confined to dreams.”
“Nightmares, more like.”
“It’s like he’s trying to goad me. Remind me of all the terrible shit from the past—things I fucked up with my family. Back in the realm, he burned me too. Same place.” Kirin rubs his chest, the memories making him wince. “But he hasn’t touched me on the material plane. All that stuff with my family… I don’t know. My theory is he feeds on it.”
“Awesome. So I’m basically a walking buffet.” I force a grin, but it doesn’t last.
Turning away, I stare into the fireplace, watching the flames flicker and sway, wondering what kind of fucked-up shit makes someone turn so completely dark. As Arcana mages, our power is pure and infinite, our potential unlimited. We’re supposed to use that power toprotectmagick, not destroy it. Notpossessit.
“Baz,” Kirin says softly, “when we found you in that house…”
